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A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

nytimes.com

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Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#81

Post by goosejuice »

15457345234 wrote: post #71
goosejuice wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly 'pure gaslighting'. Both can be true. The user is a part of the equation.

The user is more likely to turn to a drug or their phone if they find their life unsatisfying but that doesn't alter the fact that the drug/phone can be far more stimulating than any experience they'd encounter 'organically' That's the issue; the real world can only offer up so much so fast. Drugs and the scroll can offer it faster. Expecting people to turn away from that even when it's visibly harming them isn't rea…

I think we agree that things are addictive. Perhaps we disagree on the practical approach to resolving that. You aren't going to rid the world of fentanyl or cell phones. So now what?

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#82

Post by hifromLA »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #43
darth_avocado wrote: post #6

It is unfortunate that the phone hardware companies have an interest in you using their phone more, otherwise they'd make it easier to manage your phone usage better. The screentime app in iPhone for example is so easy to bypass as a user even when you were the one who limited certain apps usage. I want an app that strictly locks away my access to an app and also suppresses notifications. Is that so hard to build? It…

I never found Screentime usable because something like turn-by-turn navigation would count against the global screen time, with no option to exclude it. worthless.

If you are using car play the work around is to have the screen off and use car play without nav full screen (using the view with tiles basically).

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#83

Post by Syonyk »

I am so glad to see this backlash. It's been a long time coming.

We've tried smartphones out for the past... oh, decade and change. They've been around longer, but were niche enough that they didn't dominate society, and even around the start of the iPhone era, "Crackberry" and such were common enough terms (with "Put all your devices in the center, whoever picks theirs up first buys the next round" being a fun game to play in certain company).

The results are solidly in: They're an utter disaster for most people, and for society at large. In no particular order, they ruin social interactions in public situations (think "talking to people in the grocery line" - though I've seen fewer people on their phones lately and can get some conversations going), they're utterly toxic for teenagers (especially teenage girls - studies vary on just how bad it is, but "awful" is a good start), and on through the ages.

I think it's important for the "techie sorts" to very actively reject that which smartphones (and most of consumer tech, really...) has become, and that's one reason I carry a flip phone instead of a defanged smartphone - it's visually different and stands out as a "... wait, you carry one of those?" conversation starter.

I've been trying very hard to get back to an offline-first life. And dumping the smartphone is a key step there.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#85

Post by sandbx »

check out How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Odell, Jenny) ... the punchline is that it is always there, you just have to find a reason to not want it.

Also, going through the feature checklist on https://www.dumbphones.org/ made me realize how many of these things are so helpful. I checked all the ones I would want, and there were no dumbphones that supported them. GPS Navigation, Group Text, Hotspot, WiFi Calling, Rideshare, Camera, Calendar Sync. And, if it can do all those things, its not that dumb.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#86

Post by SoftTalker »

BeetleB wrote: post #29
allthecybers wrote: post #15

I'd love to quit my smartphone and have looked at options like Lite Phone to replace it. The only issue is my smartphone is now my GPS, my payment method, my home lighting controller, my car/house key, and my health tracker. Plus, was a convenient way to keep tabs on work messages. Half a decade ago I eliminated all my social media. Then about a year ago I started by removing work email and messaging from my phone.Th…

> The only issue is my smartphone is now my GPS, my payment method, my home lighting controller, my car/house key, and my health tracker. If you use GPS only for navigation in a car, get a Garmin or something similar. Payment: Is it that hard to use a CC like most people do...? I only recently used my phone for payments (lost card and was waiting for replacement), and did not find it any more convenient than using a…

How did people manage before smartphones?

GPS: Garmin, or use a map.

Payments: use a card, or cash.

Car keys: use the keys that came with the car.

House keys: Carry them with you, or get a keypad lock.

Lights: use the switch on the wall

Health tracker: notebook and pencil

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#88

Post by Syonyk »

Apocryphon wrote: post #75
Syonyk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, absolutely. A desktop is far, far less "fanged" than a phone. It's not with you all the time, and it generally can't send notifications if you don't have a webpage open (I know there are the "web notifications" every shady site wants to use, but they're off by default, vs on by default for phones). Going back to a desktop computer that you turn off regularly (so there's some friction waiting for it to boot) is on…

Yeah, but these days almost all white collar workers are on a desktop at least eight hours a day, and when you go home at night wouldn’t you prefer the form factor of a larger screen rather than a handheld one?

Well, no, actually.

I prefer the form factor of board games, paper books, and such things over any sort of digital devices in the evening. So form factor isn't a big deal.

I'm trying to recover an offline-first life, in which I only use digital devices for interacting with other people (or, occasionally, communicating about such things - it's been an intermittent theme on my blog, and I've got a lot more "offline project" posts coming up soon, about charcoal, rock dust, and other related things).

Mostly, anymore, I use a desktop at home.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#89

Post by SoftTalker »

tayo42 wrote: post #9

Last year I got all into trying to, idk what to call it, "un-tech" my life. I started excitedly telling my wife I was going to get a one of these dumb phones and start using it. The next day a broken car on an incline rolled back into my car damaging it. I had to pull out my smartphone document the whole thing with pictures. I got a whole "what would you do with your dumb phone" and dropped the whole thing. There is…

You didn't have to "document the whole thing with pictures." That's simply not required, and not reasonable to expect.

Re: A practical guide to quitting your smartphone

#90

Post by azinman2 »

darth_avocado wrote: post #6

It is unfortunate that the phone hardware companies have an interest in you using their phone more, otherwise they'd make it easier to manage your phone usage better. The screentime app in iPhone for example is so easy to bypass as a user even when you were the one who limited certain apps usage. I want an app that strictly locks away my access to an app and also suppresses notifications. Is that so hard to build? It…

Focus modes are meant to be exactly that, although it doesn’t prevent you from getting out of it. Do you really need something so strong? If so, why not consider just locking away your phone or getting rid of it?
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